The fileChanged() signal is emitted when a file has been modified, renamed or removed from disk. Similarly, the directoryChanged() signal is emitted when a directory or its contents is modified or removed. Note that QFileSystemWatcher stops monitoring files once they have been renamed or removed from disk, and directories once they have been removed from disk.

Note: Windows CE does not support directory monitoring by default as this depends on the file system driver installed.

Note: The act of monitoring files and directories for modifications consumes system resources. This implies there is a limit to the number of files and directories your process can monitor simultaneously. On Mac OS X 10.4 and all BSD variants, for example, an open file descriptor is required for each monitored file. Some system limits the number of open file descriptors to 256 by default. This means that addPath() and addPaths() will fail if your process tries to add more than 256 files or directories to the file system monitor. Also note that your process may have other file descriptors open in addition to the ones for files being monitored, and these other open descriptors also count in the total. Mac OS X 10.5 and up use a different backend and do not suffer from this issue.

QFileSystemWatcher::~QFileSystemWatcher()

Adds path to the file system watcher if path exists. The path is not added if it does not exist, or if it is already being monitored by the file system watcher.

If path specifies a directory, the directoryChanged() signal will be emitted when path is modified or removed from disk; otherwise the fileChanged() signal is emitted when path is modified, renamed or removed.

If the watch was successful, true is returned.

Reasons for a watch failure are generally system-dependent, but may include the resource not existing, access failures, or the total watch count limit, if the platform has one.

Note: There may be a system dependent limit to the number of files and directories that can be monitored simultaneously. If this limit is been reached, path will not be monitored, and false is returned.

Adds each path in paths to the file system watcher. Paths are not added if they not exist, or if they are already being monitored by the file system watcher.

If a path specifies a directory, the directoryChanged() signal will be emitted when the path is modified or removed from disk; otherwise the fileChanged() signal is emitted when the path is modified, renamed, or removed.

The return value is a list of paths that could not be watched.

Reasons for a watch failure are generally system-dependent, but may include the resource not existing, access failures, or the total watch count limit, if the platform has one.

Note: There may be a system dependent limit to the number of files and directories that can be monitored simultaneously. If this limit has been reached, the excess paths will not be monitored, and they will be added to the returned QStringList.

This signal is emitted when the directory at a specified path, is modified (e.g., when a file is added, modified or deleted) or removed from disk. Note that if there are several changes during a short period of time, some of the changes might not emit this signal. However, the last change in the sequence of changes will always generate this signal.